Free Rose 3: Rose and the Magician's Mask by Holly Webb Page B

could see the ropes tying it to the strange iron mushrooms sprouting from the dock. The ship resembled a shark, or one of those strange black diving birds that Rose had seen in Freddie’s Boy’s Guide to Natural History, with twenty-four coloured plates .
    And they were going to sail on it. It was going to goflying through the water with them on board. Rose tore her eyes away from the black-painted timbers and saw that they were surrounded by a forest of masts, all starkly black against the fiery sky.
    Sailors were hurrying down from the vessel, anddisappearing with the baggage, and an officer came stalking down the gangplank to escort them aboard.
    Freddie was bubbling over with excitement at their luck. The naval vessel that the king had promised was in fact the very same Princess Jane that had had such a dramatic effect on the Talish war, he explained to Rose. She had been renamed after the baby princess, and regarded as a lucky ship ever since. Her original commander, the gallant Captain Fremantle, had most unfortunately been lost overboard while on a cruise to the Indies. The crew swore blind that he had been snatched from the forecastle by an enormous squid, but it had been felt by the Admiralty that this was untrue. Captain Fremantle had been very fond of rum, and it seemed more likely that he had simply lost his footing in a rough sea and slipped overboard. It was assumed that his crew, who had the greatest affection for him, despite his liking of long speeches, had manufactured the squid story to glorify his memory.
    The Princess Jane was now commanded by Captain Peake, and Rose thought his memory seemed unlikelyto be glorified by anyone. He seemed a bad-tempered,self-important man, and he greeted Mr Fountain on the deck of his ship with a curse.
    ‘We’ve missed the wind, do you realise? You and your party of children – children ! Am I transporting a dame-school now?’ He glared round at Freddie, Rose and Bella – Bella in particular, carrying an ermine muff, and with her doll Lucy dressed to match. This charming picture seemed to infuriate him, and he positively growled.
    Rose put her own hand inside Bella’s muff, and clasped one of the chilly little paws, drawing her back against an enormous coil of rope, out of the way of the captain’s anger. She didn’t quite trust Bella not to say something terribly rude, or perhaps even grow claws, like she’d seen the smaller girl do once before.
    Bella shivered, looking up into the web of rigging. ‘I do not like boats. Do you think we will be on this one very long?’
    ‘It all depends on the wind,’ Freddie murmured. ‘And he says we’ve lost it. We could be stuck in the harbour for days. But it’s only a few hours to Cormanse, once we get going.’ He laughed, staring up at the masts. ‘Faster than the journey here from London. Isn’t the ship grand?’
    ‘Oh, I cannot bear it!’ Bella wailed, looking over theside of the ship at the water. ‘Look at the way it tosses up and down!’
    Gus walked along the rail, his whiskers twitchingdisgustedly. Cats were not fond of water, he had told Rose. He was only coming on this journey because they would undoubtedly be lost without him.
    Rose stared over Bella’s shoulder. There was a gentle swell in the harbour, but she had a feeling that this did not count as rough weather, and that it might be rather worse when they were actually out at sea. Her stomach turned over, but she was reasonably sure that it was fright, not seasickness.
    ‘Perhaps we should go below?’ she suggested, gazing out along the side of the ship to the open water. There was such a lot of it. It was disconcerting to think that soon – she wasn’t sure whether to hope for a wind or not – they would be out in the middle of it, unable even to see the land. The massive coils of anchor chain around the capstan, marked with weed and strange crustings of shellfish, seemed a lifeline, connectingthem to the earth.
     
    As it turned out,